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Yes. Definitely. And this is one of the reason why I am against the death penalty.
Authority figures in private companies can also be wrong. But at least when private companies make mistakes, they can be forced to deal with the consequences. For example, whoever came up with the ridiculous idea of the Divx form of DVDs must have suffered a lot of financial loss from it. I myself have chosen to boycott Circuit City because of this. Private companies have to answer to their customers and their investors.
If Divx had been a government program, its supporters would say that the "solution" was to have the government spend more money on it.
The war on drugs has been a proven failure, which caused the situation to become worse. The war on poverty has been a proven failure, which simply created dependency and encouraged illegitimacy. Spending more and more money on public schools has not made them better. Despite these failures, the supporters of these things continue to insist that the "solution" is to have the government spend more money.
Private businesses make mistakes all the time. Private busnesses are run by human beings, and human beings make mistakes. But private businesses have a feedback system that governemnt policies do not have. Most private businesses end up failing, and going out of business. Only the ones that are able to satisfy their customers can survive for a long period of time.
Except in cases of corporate welfare. Corporate welfare enables businesses to continue existing, even if they aren't doing a good job. Enron collected $1.6 billion in coprorate welfare from both major political parties. Clinton helped Enron to get special deals, such as in India.
Now that Clinton is no longer President, Enron isn't getting as much government help as it did when Clinton was President. So now Enron's stock has tanked.
Those who have government power over people's lives do not like to admit they were wrong. Parole is a great example. Two weeks ago, I posted an article about a paroled murderer who committed another murder. The pro-parole people here ignored it.
I want parole for murderers and rapists and child molestors to be abolished. But the elitists like parole, because they think they have the psychic ability to predict who will commit more violent crimes, and who won't. This kind of elitism is absurd.
As long as parole does exist, I think it should be reformed. Here's my idea: if a paroled criminal commits a crime, then the people who voted for parole should be charged as accessories to the crime. This way, the elitists who favor parole will be forced to pay the consequences of their actions.
One of the big problems with government programs is that the people who make important decisions are shielded from the consequences of their decisions. Parole is a great example, because when a paroled criminal goes out and rapes someone, the people who voted for parole aren't charged as accessories. Public schools are another example, because many public school teachers and administrators, plus Al Gore and Bill Clinton, send their own kids to private school. Federal workers were exmpt from Social Security taxes before 1983.
The free market system offers choices to individuals. And business owners who make bad decisions are forced to pay for their mistakes, which is why most small businesses end up failing.
Ultimately, the idea of free market vs. governemnt planning is really just a question of decision making. Who should make important decisions that affect people's lives? Should politicans control people's lives, or, should each individual be free to control his own life?
With the death penalty, people who make important decisions are shielded from the consequences of bad decisions. I think that, statisitcally speaking, it's quite likely that quite a few innocent people have been executed. And the people in the legal system who made the mistakes in these things are completely shielded from the consequences.
The war on drugs, the war on poverty, corporate welfare, and spending more and more money on public schools are all great examples of people in power who don't have to pay the prices for the bad decisions that they make. Instead, the people who suffer are innocent people, who had no role in making these decisions.
The elitiss who support government price controls claim that they are "helping" consumers. But they are wrong. In reality, government price controls are just another way for the elitists to prevent individual citizens from expressing their individual preferences for how they want to spend their money. Elitists claim that price controls make things more "affordable," but what price controls really do is cause shortages, and make things "inaccessible" to some of the people who want them.
That's why the elitists have never supported government price controls on abortion. Imagine what would happen if there was a law that capped abortion prices at $100 per abortion. Then the number of doctors who would be willing to perform abortions would go down.
If Republicans really want to ban abortion, they should take advantage of the fact that most Democrats don't understand the law of supply and demand. They should pass a law called "The Abortion Affordabilty Protection Act." This would cap the price of abortions at only $100. The Republicans could claim that this law will "help" low income people get "access to affordable abortion." But what the law would really do is that it would basically outlaw most abortions.
In reality, price controls are really a restriction on buyers. My hypothetical abortion law is proof of this. The elitist liberals would never support price controls on abortion. But they do support government price controls on just about everything else because they know that the "common people" don't understand basic economics. Price controls on food in Africa have caused famine wherever they have been implemented, but the elitists still think that these price controls "help" people to get "access to affordable food."
Again, it's simply a question of the elitists trying to control other people. Elitists hate free market capitalism, because they hate the idea of letting each individual control his own life.
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